Link Building Notes of an SEO&nbspKindergartner

This post was promoted from YouMoz. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

Sharing is good in kindergarten and in SEO.

- Kate

Hello fellow mozzers! Since this is my first YOUmoz post, let me introduce myself. I am Pritam Barhate, a fellow (as you may have noticed) who posts long, intelligent, insightful comments (* All the readers roll their eyes. One of them even looks for a nearby rotten tomato. Fortunately, he doesn't find it. *) here on SEOmoz.

By profession I am a web developer and designer. I was introduced to SEO around 9-10 months ago. And since then I have been fascinated by the subject.

A while back, Rand did a post asking us, "What Part of the SEO Process is Hardest for You?", to which most of us replied, "Link Building." My answer was the same. I decided to go through all the blog posts on SEOmoz tagged under 'link building'. While reading the posts (as like a good student), I took some notes to record the tips and techniques of link building. And since this is my first year as an SEO, I consider myself an SEO Kindergartner.

This is my attempt to share all those link building tips that I learned from SEOmoz in a well structured manner so that they can be read as a complete document and can be referenced later when we need help in any particular area. I hope that all the SEO beginners out there will find this helpful and maybe, just maybe (a little tiny maybe), those SEO ninjas will also find it helpful in case they need to brush off a bit of rust here and there from their swords.

Online media sites such as The New York Times, Boston.com, and About.com

University sites

Government sites

The blogosphere

Professional contacts (satisfied customers, suppliers, business groups, regulatory bodies, similar sites operating in different geographic areas)

Personal contacts

Directories

How to get links:

Link bait content

High quality exclusive content

Missing content on other authority websites

Article submissions/article exchanges

Your own blogs

Widgets

Through PR firms and offline marketing

Contests

Ask for a link (directly/indirectly)

Micro sites/buying sites for links

Restructuring your website to make it more link-sexy

After that I have created 20 broad categories representing each of the above (8 places + 11 tactics + 1 miscellaneous) and put the tips in these categories where they belong. Somehow this reminds me of the sorting hat in Harry Potter movies, and that hat is black ;-). But I haven't tried to pass any judgment while including link building tips. If it is posted by a mozzer then it is there. As far as Black/White hat is considered, use your moral judgment.

Also, there is one big question of credits. As I started putting the final version of notes together initially I tried to add the username of the mozzer who posted the tip. But then I found out that it was becoming very jarring to read the notes because of all these user names on every third line. Also, it was adding quite a few lines to the documents and I wanted to compact the notes as much as possible.

But then again, it is not good to use somebody's content and not give him/her some benefit. And for an SEO, what is more valuable than a link? So here are the real heroes of this post (in alphabetical order):

While gathering material for this post, I realized that SEOs as a community don’t have a wiki dedicated to SEO. I know Wikipedia, Knol, and sites like are those are out there. But Wikipedia nofollows everything, so contributors don’t get much incentive for contributing. And maybe someone will ask, "What’s wrong with YOUmoz? If you have something meaningful to say, post it there." Yes, but by nature YOUmoz is a blog. And in my opinion, blogs are a navigational nightmare. A wiki is more organized, so it is easy to access the content as and when required without much hassle.

What I am suggesting is a wiki dedicated to SEO maintained by an entity that does SEO and understands SEO. For this to be successful, I think such an entity should be popular enough and should have its own active community. (Hint SEOmoz, Hint!) Somebody financially big enough that they will not need to add advertisements on the wiki pages (at least not within content AdSense). Somebody who will do it just for branding purposes.

Does some great wiki like that already exist and I just made an ass out of myself by asking to create it? If yes, please point me to that wiki.

The problem with wikis is that they're edited by the masses. If you open a wiki up to the SEO community, it would be filled with hearsay and misinformation, because that's what the masses believe in. The elite SEOs who know the truth wouldn't waste their time trying to fight against everyone else's edits.

>> I would have hosted the document on your own site - its excellent link bait :)

Yes, It was a very hard decision not to do so. For me it was a delicate situation. I was sure creating value by putting the tips together in organized manner but at the same time I was using knowledge and content provided by others to SEOMoz.

So in true Moz spirit I decided not use the document for promotion my site and gave it to the community.

And after all the nice comments by all you guys is good enough reward for me for the effort I put in the post.

Mine is printing as I type this. It's going into my SEOmoz folder alongside other wonderful link building articles. When I come across great articles I put them into a word doc, print them, and file them away. This really comes in handy when I need to explain stuff to other people on my team.

Thanks for the informative post. SEOmoz is chock full of priceless info and it is nice to see such a compilation. If SEOmoz was a football team, I would paint my face in the SEOmoz colors, shout screaming cheers to the top of my lungs whenever they took the field, and buy season tickets to all their games!

Do not use that SEO wiki!
The first page I look at is for Keyword Density Analysis. It contains the following gems:
Search engine optimization takes months before you start to see results...
The most popular tool which tells you how many times a search was done is the Overture Keyword Suggestion tool...
[Keyword density analysis] will give you a good idea of which keywords you need to use when optimizing your existing pages - not everyone is going to rewrite their site's content in an effort to optimize. Some simple things you can do already existing pages will take your search engine ranking to the next level (See Chapter 4: whatever).
So to be clear... that site blows. Don't waste your time.

Great post, great document! No doubt a lot of work and effort has gone into this. As for SEO wiki - I am sure if it was hosted here, then rather than create an open house for all content, content would have to be vetted/voted in by everyone, or just the experts?

It would allow for general user generated content, whilst ensuring its quality isn't degraded? And of course it would be very brandable.

Pritam, the document is clear, straightforward and very comprehensive. I am going to keep it in my arsenal of SEO important docs because it works great as a reminder of the many link-building techniques to the disposal of SEO pros and that we often oversee. You have put up with a considerable amount of work to get that document up and running and all for the benefit of the community, well done and thank you! oh and count on my sphinn too!

For a non-prefessional like me, who is just trying to earn an honest link for his (non-SEO) site, this is a great document. I can use it myself and I have shared it with the other "link builders" here who all hate link building. Heard that somewhere before, I think. What is so good about what you have done is that there is something there for everyone. So although her indoors hates ringing up professional associations who always want to refer things to committees, she locked onto going after suppliers and woudl be calling them now if she wasnot cooking dinner....

I even have my kids using it! It does not get any better than that. What a first post.

Thanks for very good post. Linkbuildin is critical and good tips are always welcomed. I support wiki idea. There is lots of mes-communication in SEO area, in very simple things like what what exactly is backlink in Yahoo and Google terms.

An idea of wiki should be developed, I guess. A while agowe already have an idea of uniting our efforts and organize and share the resources via Google Docs (or any other similar service). It would be seen by anyone but edited by only a handful of authors.

One of the best link building articles...wait the best link building article I've come across.

Check out my link to you in my blog. I'm speaking to a group of web design students at Butte College on Wednesday and want them to have as much info as possible. I am giving them a list of resources on my blog....Your notes are going to be highly recommended reading. Thank-you

Thank you so much, this is superb. I'm an SEO Kingergartner myself and have been assigned research topcs, one of which is link-building. Your document will be an invaluable resource! You've also inadvertantly given a tip for further research - I hadn't even noticed the tags before!

Thanks for the quote. I actually remember saying that!! Seriously, that's a bonus for me, I hardly ever remember half the stuff I say on here. This is a great resource and like Kristy I look forward to going through it with a fine tooth comb, see if I can find anything I missed.

I wish this was posted before I bookmarked a hundred pages! Thanks for the pdf. I just skimmed through and it's an easy informative read. Very convenient reference. I appreciate all of your hard work! I think an SEO wiki would be great but I can see the downfalls...about the one that has the link posted here and was said to be inaccurate - maybe someone can edit the inaccuracies? (just for fun...) Thanks again!